On Sept. 18, 2018, shortly after the hydrogen fueling station in Potsdam was started up (see Potsdam Meets 50-Station Target), the 51st one in Germany, and first in Saxony state, went into operation in Dresden. It is located on Wiener Strasse, at a Total gas station in an easily accessible spot in the midst of the city’s historic core. Its construction was partly funded by EU project Connecting Hydrogen Refueling Stations, or COHRS for short. The state’s second site came online on the very same day. It is also part of a Total gas station, or, more specifically, a truck stop named Poststrasse, near the A14 autobahn.
Stefan Brangs, who works at Saxony’s economy ministry, said at the opening ceremony that he was pleased to see “the gaps in the fueling network in east and middle Germany getting smaller all the while the number of publicly accessible stations is becoming larger. The establishment of a densely connected network of stations across Europe will be vital to convincing more people to buy hydrogen vehicles.”
Only three days later, another station opened at Mundorf Tank in Frechen, near the Cologne West interchange, where the A1 and A4 autobahns meet. It was installed by Air Liquide as part of the company’s “Small 4-Wheel fuel cell passenger vehicle Applications in Regional and Municipal transport” project, or SWARM, partly funded by the European Fuel Cells and Hydrogen Joint Undertaking. Another COHRS project saw a symbolic opening on Oct. 23, 2018, at the Fuel Cell Forum in the state of Hesse. The actual pump is located at Weiterstadt’s Shell gas station, near Darmstadt’s interchange between the A5 and A67.
On Nov. 21, two more fueling opportunities showed up on the map, one in Magdeburg and another in Munich. Since the former was the first ever in the state of Saxony-Anhalt, the state’s governor himself, Reiner Haseloff, was in attendance when it came online at a Total truck stop on Glindenberger Weg. Among those invited to the opening of the latter, located on Verdistrasse at the A8 autobahn near Bavaria’s capital, were Christian Bruch, a member of Linde’s board of directors, and Josef Zellmeier, who worked at the state’s transportation ministry at the time. These last two sites pushed the number of operational hydrogen fueling stations in Germany to 55 at the end of 2018.
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